I can't be, without you
by Iceinherheart
Summary: Zion remembers... and makes a move to never forget


Part of him is glad now that he's going to die, and that is the same part of him that is glad that he doesn't have to live without her. He wants to laugh, or scoff at himself, because he reminds himself of the heroes from the tragedies that he used to refuse to read as a child, when he became far too interested in computers to pay attention. He had hated the idiots in the tales who would rather die than cause pain to their loved ones or to let them die or live without them. Now, he's one of them. It makes him gag and gasp as the place where his heart had once been, before it had left him when she did, constricts.

Because he can't breathe with out her.

Morpheus had told him that the air inside that matrix was unreal, didn't exist – quite right too – but he hadn't even paused to think that the air in the real world, where he was still just a vulnerable human being, didn't exist either. It didn't exist, because the air he breathed didn't consist of oxygen, nitrogen and the like, it consisted of her. He couldn't breathe without Trinity.

Thinking about it, he was sure that one of those few tragedies he'd got round to reading, the dead love interest's name had been Trenita. He'd forgotten about that book, which he was almost dead certain he'd left on his desk when he'd left the life of Tomas Anderson behind when he'd failed to climb out of that bloody window. He wonders now if that had been her influence on him, even when he'd been locked in his pod with no idea that she existed bar the strange messages that kept appearing on his computer and the rumours, the rumours of The Trinity. The infamous Trinity who he'd idolised and probably would have adored even then… If he hadn't of thought she was a guy.

"_You said 'I'm sorry'_." They had been his last words to her, he realised. And now he agreed with her words, her dying words, that they where words he regretted. How fitting it was, he realised, that her words had been befitting for the two of them. He hopes, he realised, that she knew how much that he loved her, still loves her, always will love her, the way he knows she loved, loves, will love, him.

As he died, Smith long gone, he did not see the white he expected. No. As he died, Neo saw the palest of blues.

With her name across his lips.

* * *

Zion had rejoiced for two days in a brilliant, fiery inferno before they'd worked it out, before they'd sent out crews to bring back the body, and all the celebrations had instantly stopped. Surprisingly, they had found Neo's body first, despite it being further from the city than Trinity's. The public had just assumed that it was because they knew where to look to find him. They couldn't have been further from the truth.

They'd been in the temple – Morpheus, Niobe, Link, Cas, Zee and Councillor Hamann – to pray for their safe return when Kid had burst into the room, not bothering to remove his shoes in his rush, his face grave and taunt.

"Morpheus!" He called, as he dug his feet into the ground to bring him to a stop, offering the information disk to him. He paused to pant, his eyes glazing over and his voice lowered. "Morpheus, I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" The Captain asked accepting the disk cautiously, staring at it intently as if the answer to his question was inscribed on it, rather than in that data it contained. "Kid? What's happened?" He swallowed the horrible sensation that had risen in his throat to talk past it. "It's Neo, isn't it?" Kid nodded sadly.

"They found him. I'm sorry, Morpheus, He's dead."

The shocked reaction travelled not only through the Nebuchadnezzar's crew and friends, but through the whole temple. The words, though quiet, seemed to echo through the temple as the people in their thousands gasped and cried, tears falling in the millions.

_The One is dead._

Morpheus shook his head at those around him as Link wound both his arms around his wife and sister and Councillor Hamann bowed his head in respect. Morpheus raised his eyes to meet those of the visibly distraught Kid.

"And Trinity?"

"They only found Neo's body." Kid told him sadly. "Trinity wasn't at or near the site where they found him. We haven't found her yet, we don't know whether or not she is alive. There's no body – yet we have not seen of her."

"Then…" Morpheus frowned, laying a comforting arm across the boy's shoulders as he guided him to sit. "Then our Trinity is also dead. She would not have left him to complete his mission alone if she was not." He raised an arm to the tearful Hamann. "Councillor, we must find her body. We must lay them to rest."

The body, Neo's body, had been led in the hospital as they cleaned and worked around him. His cuts and lacerations that remained where wiped and stitched and dressed, and he was redressed in a new grey jumper and dark trousers, bare foot. His hair cleaned and cut back to the length he'd preferred. His eyes where left open once they had been healed to the best of Zion standards, no one bothered to close them until eighty-three hours later; when a second stretcher was brought in, and Trinity was placed beside her lover, her own body free of shrapnel and wounds closed, dressed in the only Zion dress she owned. They deemed it only fair to close his eyes then - since Trinity's logs onboard the Logos had stated he more than likely would have been blind when she died – to allow him to see her one last time.

When the council had began to search for space for a second grave, the public had argued, violently, against them. The council's decision, they realised with a malicious mirth, had all but been made for them. There would be only one grave. And they would never again be separated.

Five days after they had both been found, thousands upon thousands of the public had crowded onto the bottom floor of Zion, where it was still ground and dirt, where the single grave had been cut and the single, large, _priceless_ casket buried. Morpheus had said what he could, but little remained that hadn't been said, once the usual "Zion thanks the pair of you", "You where loyal solders and true friends and you will be severely missed" and "They loved each other more than their own lives" was the offered first from the previous speakers, and there was little else to say.

So he kept it short, repeated the thanks, briefly told the stories of how he'd unplugged the pair of them, glossed over the story of how they'd both saved each other from certain death, and pressed a hand to the wooden (and it was actually wooden, a rare, expensive delicacy in Zion, but of course, no expense was spared for _the One_) box, and added six words that had those who where not already crying bawling their eyes out – and caused a fresh wave of tears for those who where.

"Neither of you deserved to die."

Dropping back down off of the raised platform in stand next to Link and Zee, Cas stood behind them, her children each clutching one of her hands. Eventually, the small girl, Galis, stepped forward to slip her hand into his, and Morpheus turned to give her a small, reassuring smile before scoping her off her feet and into his arms. Niobe's eyes stuck to his back as he held the girl, her eyes on his as he spoke.

"This is a very morbid place for someone so young and innocent." He told her, hiking her up higher to evade dropping her. "Why did you choose to attend such a tragic event?" Galis returned his weak smile, and batted her tear laden eyelashes at him.

"Neo was a friend of Daddy's, so he was our friend too." She let her lips twitch, letting the wisdom beyond her young years show. "And Trinity was our friend too, they where family. I wanted them to know that wanted to say thank you. And that I love them." She tucked her head into his neck, her arms around his neck, like he'd seen her do once with Dozer. "But I don't think I love them as much as they loved each other. Do you?" Morpheus shook his head.

"I don't believe anyone could love them as much as they loved each other." He told her sincerely. "I don't think that is physically possible."

Galis pulled her head out from his neck again, and reached into the little bag she had been carrying with her all evening. She pulled out from inside it a small flower and offers it to the Captain.

"I found this." She told him sadly as she held it out to him in cupped hands. He folded his hands around hers. "It was in one of the flower beds near where they lived. I thought that if we buried it here, it will grow into a pretty plant. Just for Neo and Trinity."

The plant itself was only made of three colours, consisting of two different coloured flowers. The flower closest to their hands was a pale blue, littered with darker indigo flecks, the Anther a midnight black in the centre – the colours where hardly ever found in Zion. The second flower, however, was a more common colour in the city - a deep, earthly hazel with the same flecks as its blue counterpart, only in a deeper brown now.

And the stem was a brilliant matrix green.

They ended up as a bedtime story, and Trinity, they where sure, would have hated it. Neo's opinion they debated about in the lighter moments, but they liked to believe he would have been okay with it, as long as he wasn't worshiped. The children of Zion, both free-born and the red pills, would forever be told of _the One_ who saved the human race, and the woman who saved him. The younger children where told of the man released from the matrix far to old and was killed by an Agent, and of how he was brought back to life by a kiss from the unfeeling second officer on his ship, who wasn't so unfeeling anymore, and proved he was _the One_ by stopping bullets. Who lived happily ever after. Only once they where deemed old enough where they told the full, tragic story, of the man named Neo and the woman who died in his arms, Trinity (which they where never sure of, but it sounded romantic, yet it was more than that - it sounded like _them_), who gave their lives to save them.

And if the child, however naïve, would not believe, could not _free their mind_ from the stories they had been told for the entirety of their childhood, their parents would have one thing to say to them.

"If you don't believe what I say to you my child, I would as you to go down to the lowest level of Zion, and see the tombstone that we built for them all those years ago. And if you still don't believe the truth, my child, perhaps steal a moment with Morpheus when he visits them tonight, and ask him for the truth."

No child who chose the option to speak to Morpheus was ever disappointed. He was always there, when the lights dimmed and people where lulled to sleep by their busy days. He never spoke unless spoken to first, never sat, he only stared at the words engraved onto the stone.

The flower had taken well and the plant spread across the grave, flowers of all magnificent colours bloomed across the open, untouched space. But there was only ever one blue flower, and one brown flower, at a time, which would grow taller than the rest of the bush, to stand higher than the prettier, happier colours. The bush itself seemed almost aware of the headstone that it grew around and, with no trimming ever required, the words engraved there, so they could always be read, as if it knew the significance of them. The words never needed to be seen. Every grown man or woman in Zion had them memorised, and no one memorised them quicker than Morpheus. He never had to. They where his words, after all.

_Here lie the heroes of Zion  
Neo & Trinity,  
__The One and his One,  
__To prove not even their  
Deaths could end their  
Love._


End file.
